Our Continued Loss Of Freedom, Part 1: The Loss Of Economic Freedom

One of the reasons why America has been such a wonderful experiment in government is because of the many freedoms that the Founders guaranteed via the Constitution and Bill of Rights. America has lifted more people out of poverty and created a legendary middle class that has never been matched anytime in history. Freedom comes in many different ways and each of those ways helps make Americans wealthier and freer to live their lives as they want.

But for the next few days we will be examining how that freedom mission and promise has been severely impaired by the American political class. We have often discussed on how our freedom of speech, freedom of religion, economic freedom, and other freedoms have been eroded over time by our politicians. And as the next few days will prove, these politicians have continued to impose their will on us and will continue to do so until we will them to stop.

Today will be focusing on how our economic freedom is being stripped away by over taxation and over regulation of the Federal government. And when you think about it, without economic freedom, i.e. the freedom to keep the fruits of our labor, there really cannot be many other kinds of freedom. If you were allowed to keep more of your income and wages, you could:

• Send your kids to better schools.
• More easily start your own business.
• Donate more to charities and needy individuals that you want to help.
• Take more and better vacations.
• Live in a better house or drive a better car.

Without economic freedom, freedom in other parts of your life becomes much more restrictive.

The basis of our economic freedom discussion will be the annual study of economic freedom by country that is conducted by the Heritage Foundation every year. Let’s see where the U.S. falls in their latest analysis:

1) Unfortunately, the latest study shows that the U.S. has slipped all the way down to the 17th position relative to the rest of the world when at one time, not too long ago, the U.S. was one of the most economically free nations in the world. 

2) The top 25 nations look like the following:

1- Hong Kong, trending upward relative to overall economic freedom.
2 - Singapore, trending upward.
3 - New Zealand, trending upward.
4 - Switzerland, trending upward.
5- Australia, trending upward.
6 - Estonia, trending upward.
7 - Canada, trending upward.
8 - United Arab Emirates, trending upward.
9 - Ireland, trending downward.
10 - Chile, trending downward.
11 - Taiwan, trending upward.
12 - Great Britain, flat.
13 - Georgia, trending upward.
14 - Luxembourg, trending upward.
15 - The Netherlands, trending upwards.
16 - Lithuania, trending upward.
17 - United States, trending upward.
18 - Denmark, trending downward.
19 - Sweden, trending upward.
20 - Latvia, trending upward.

3) Observations from the above list include the following:

• Countries with the highest economic freedom overwhelmingly are trending upwards, with the U.S. being one of the few in the top twenty that are trending downwards.
• Many former members (Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania) of the Soviet Union, one of the most economically oppressive regimes ever, are comparable or much better relative to economic freedom than the United States which used to be close to the gold standard for economic freedom.
• Even the United Arab Emirates, a macho Middle East country, is much freer economically than the U.S.
• Scandinavian countries like Denmark, Sweden, and others, often cited by Democrats and liberals as countries we should aspire to, all fall below the U.S., indicating that their economic freedom is even worse than the falling U.S. level of economic freedom.

From one of the freest economic powers in the world we are now lagging behind once former backward economies from Estonia, Georgia, and the United Arab Emirates.

4) For the last four years of the Bush administration, the overall economic freedom index was over 80. Since Obama took office, in just eight years, the U.S. economic freedom index has plunged almost 7% down to about 75. 

5) Back in 2006, Hong Kong was also the most economically free country in the world but the difference between Hong Kong and the U.S. index values were only 7. But by 2017, that difference in index had doubled to 14. Thus, while Hong Kong has maintained its index quite steady over time, the U.S. has steadily lost ground to Hong Kong.

6) Fifteen years ago the U.S. was the 6th most economically free country but has allowed 11 other countries to surpass it in that timeframe.

Thus, given the deterioration in our economic freedom, is there any doubt why we have had to endure the following anemic economic malaise over the past eight years:

• The worst economic recovery from a recession since the Great Depression.
• Eight years of GDP economic growth that never broke through to 3% or higher nor attained the long term historical trend line of GDP annual growth.
• Wage and household income growth that has been stagnant during almost the entire Obama Presidency.
• Job creation during the Obama recovery has included mostly temp, contract, and low paying service industry type jobs.

During the Obama administration, the tax burden went up, thousands and thousands of Federal government regulations were added to the economy, and the national debt doubled which led to less and less economic freedom which led to the above horrible economic realities. It is all related and tied together. Unfortunately, as our economic freedom went down, as measured by this economic freedom index, so did our political and individual freedom. And that sucks.

More on our loss of freedom tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

October, 2015, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Fudging the Numbers At The Pentagon, Diminishing Economic Freedom and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity post we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history

Over the next two days we should wrap up the political class insanity that has rained down on us in just the past month or so, an effort that will likely take us a full seven days to document and review:

1) Despite his grandiose campaign promise that he would operate the “most transparent Presidential administration ever,” we have shown dozens and dozens of times that he has actually operated the most opaque, secretive, and deceptive Presidency of all time. He has stifled and block Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, he has spied on journalists, he has sent the IRS after his political opponents, he has released FOIA information that was severely redacted and useless, his Justice Department has illegally destroyed government documents, his Justice Department has ignored requests from Congress for government documents, his administration has illegally tried to charge Americans for FOIA requests, he has tried to silence whistle blowers, etc. 

And now we find out that we have a very serious breach of integrity and accurate information as it relates to the fight against terrorism and within the Defense Department. Over four dozen professional intelligence experts within the Defense Department have claimed that national security intelligence reports on the major terrorist organizations around the world are being altered to show a more favorable slant for Obama's failing war on terror. These intelligence analysts, working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), have made the accusation that the information they are developing is being altered to downplay various terror organizations’ strength.

According to a report from the Daily Beast, senior officials are changing the information: “The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official told the reporter. What started with accusations from two senior intelligence analysts has now been strengthened with another four dozen or so analysts supporting the claim.

The Daily Beast, an entity that usually loves anything Obama is involved in, reported the following atrocities of data integrity:

"The accusations suggest that a large number of people tracking the inner workings of the terror groups think that their reports are being manipulated to fit a public narrative. The allegations echoed charges that political appointees and senior officials cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s supposed weapons program in 2002 and 2003.

Some of those CENTCOM analysts described the sizeable cadre of protesting analysts as a “revolt” by intelligence professionals who are paid to give their honest assessment, based on facts, and not to be influenced by national-level policy. The analysts have accused senior-level leaders, including the director of intelligence and his deputy in CENTCOM, of changing their analyses to be more in line with the Obama administration’s public contention that the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda is making progress. The analysts take a more pessimistic view about how military efforts to destroy the groups are going…

The complaints allege that in some cases key elements of intelligence reports were removed, resulting in a document that didn’t accurately capture the analysts’ conclusions, sources familiar with the protest said. But the complaint also goes beyond alleged altering of reports and accuses some senior leaders at CENTCOM of creating an unprofessional work environment. One person who knows the contents of the written complaint sent to the inspector general said it used the word “Stalinist” to describe the tone set by officials overseeing CENTCOM’s analysis."

Many described a climate in which analysts felt they could not give a candid assessment of the situation in Iraq and Syria. Some felt it was a product of commanders protecting their own career advancement by putting the best spin on the war.

As always, if this is what Obama thinks is a transparent organization and Presidency, I would hate to see what he considers a secretive and deceptive Presidency.

2) Over the past two days, we spent a lot of time reviewing the putrid economic trends in this country that have occurred under Obama’s administration and in conjunction with the current Congress. Low wage growth, stagnant household earnings, anemic overall economic growth, record number of adults without a full time job, high unemployment among African-Americans, etc. 

These horrible economic results have happened despite the fact that Washington had three major economic tailwinds at its disposal: an $800 billion economic stimulus package, an energy revolution that substantially reduced energy costs, and a Federal Reserve that injected trillions of fake dollars into the economy. And despite these major economic aids, Obama and the rest of Washington still screwed things up. 

Yesterday, we presented four solutions to this anemic economic situation. But R. Williams, writing for Moneynews on September 18, 2015 may have identifiedthe major reason why Washington has led us down this horrible economic path: a recent study now finds that the U.S. has slipped to a depressing 16th place in the world when it comes to economic freedom.

The study uses broad indicators of economic freedoms and is done on an annual basis by Robert A. Lawson of Southern Methodist University, James Gwartney of Florida State University and Joshua Hall of West Virginia University. In 2000, the U.S. was second in the world relative to economic freedom, trailing only Hong Kong. But the latest iteration of the study shows that citizens in countries like Singapore, United Arab Emirates and get this, the former SOVIET republic of Georgia, have greater economic liberties than Americans.

The reasons for this depressing drop from second to 16th is a result of the Federal government enacting more and more regulations and that legal protections for individuals have weakened: “The United States has experienced a significant move away from rule of law and toward a highly regulated, politicized and heavily policed state,” according to Larsen. “During the past decade, non-tariff trade barriers, restrictions on foreign investment and business regulations of various kinds have grown extensively.”

Other countries ranked higher than America in 2015 include the ones listed above plus New Zealand, Switzerland, Jordan, Ireland and Qatar. So now we see that not only is economic freedom better than the U.S. in a previous Soviet Republic but two countries in the oppressive Middle East, Jordan and Qatar, are also ranked higher. 

Thus, we now have a set of numbers and professional analysis that proves what we discussed yesterday: the more government gets involved in the economy, the more unneeded regulations are implemented, the more that economically ignorant politicians involved themselves with the market and economy, the worst the economic outcome is for Americans. The trend over the past fifteen years proves that doing exactly the opposite of what Obama has done in the past six years was the better economic remedy for the country.

But this should not surprise us. In many past political class insanity posts we have proven that usually when politicians get involved with a problem, they almost never resolve it, the often make it worst, and they spend and waste trillions of dollars in the process. That is the insanity of the current set of American politicians.

More insanity tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w